Salon's Walter Shapiro: Iraq and Roll Over. Why the Antiwar Surge Failed in Congress

[flpoljunkie]

Iraq and roll over

Why the antiwar surge failed in Congress.
By Walter Shapiro

Sep. 26, 2007 | It is time to face the blunt truth: This Congress, despite its nominal Democratic majorities, is not going to hasten the end of the Iraq war. This is not defeatism on the home front nor is it a rant against the accommodationist tactics of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Rather, this inescapable conclusion is based on the coin of the realm on Capitol Hill -- the stark arithmetic of head counts.

Any ambiguity was put to rest last week by a series of Senate votes on the Pentagon spending bill that demonstrated that the Republican Party remains immune to any surge in antiwar sentiment. Six GOP votes were the high-water mark; they were cast in favor of a ballyhooed amendment (sponsored by Virginia freshman Democrat Jim Webb) to prompt a back-door drawdown in troops by limiting the duration of deployments to Iraq. But not a single Republican supported legislation advanced by Reid and Wisconsin's Russ Feingold to mandate a funding cutoff for most U.S. troops in Iraq by next summer. Reid-Feingold -- the most explicit expression of antiwar sentiment -- lost by a lopsided vote of 70-28, virtually the same margin as back in May.

Favoring gauzy spin over gimlet-eyed reality, some liberal Web sites tried to portray some of the Senate votes as majority triumphs (the Webb measure won 56 supporters) thwarted only by undemocratic filibuster rules (60 votes are needed to choke off debate). But that interpretation glosses over one of the rare constitutional provisions that the Bush White House still worships -- the presidential veto power. Even if a war-limitation amendment somehow made it through Congress (currently a dubious proposition), to overturn a Bush veto Democrats would have to corral 50 GOP votes in the House and 17 in the Senate (not counting über-hawk independent Joe Lieberman). And that calculus is based on the Panglossian assumption that House Democrats from conservative areas like southern Indiana would ever be willing to buck the White House on a vote that would be portrayed in Republican attack ads as not funding the troops in wartime.

<>In the Senate, Reid is majority leader by the frailest of margins -- literally, Lieberman's vote as an independent who caucuses with the Democrats. The notion -- often raised by bloggers and activists -- that Reid could defeat a filibuster by forcing the Senate to stay in session 24/7 is as ludicrous as requiring Republicans to stand on one foot and quack like a duck as they voted. A Senate leader employs a heavy hand only when he has the votes; otherwise he must rule by persuasion. Reid may not be the most artful of majority leaders, but his strategic error (and he had few other options) was believing that he could win the votes of enough wavering Republicans to make a difference on moderate antiwar measures.

more... well worth reading

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/09/26/congress_v_iraq/print.html

[jmp]

1. "Why the Antiwar Surge Failed in Congress"

Because Nancy Pelosi refuses to pull the plug on it and take the heat.

[MadHound]

2. Another who hasn't studied their civics or Constitution

The Democrats can indeed pull the plug on this war, simply by burying each and every supplemental war funding bill in committee, starve the war and bring the troops home.

But again and again the Democratic apologists continue to trot out the sixty vote meme, when the truth of the matter is they don't need any votes, just a collective spine.